CHAPTER ONE

            Through the exaggerated tint of the windows on the Greyhound, the falling snow appeared to Dawn Becker to be colored a deep, smooth auburn. The patterns created were dense and layered; their descent from the sky, frantic. Dawn, having been lucky enough to secure her own two-seat spot towards the front in New York City, would alternate between leaning her head against the window and peeking it out into the aisle to see the driver’s view of the snow. She liked to watch the snow charging maniacally towards the bus and then getting whisked off to the side, helpless even against the pathetic aerodynamics of the bread-shaped bus. She would smile, letting her eyes uncross to the rhythmic squeaking of the wiper blades.

            Cradling a yellowing, heavily creased, copy of A Farewell to Arms in her stiff hands like a newborn, Dawn shot a brief pocket of air through her clogged nasal passages and wondered how much longer it would be until the bus reached its destination. She was on the final stretch of her trip from her college in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to her sister Gina’s apartment in Albany, New York for an overdue weekend-long visit. Hating the long, tedious bus trip, Dawn, who had promised Gina she would visit before the year was up and already had Christmas and New Year’s plans with her boyfriend, bit her lip and scheduled a trip for December 1st. Making the eight-to-nine hour bus trip was an agonizing experience. Her lack of a Walkman, its batteries having expired somewhere around Philadelphia, made it worse. And although watching the falling snow made her feel tranquil, she still longed to be off the bus for good.

            Dawn Becker closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. The bus rumbled on, unconcerned, into the black and white night, sporting at its shoulders the morose landscape of northern New York State.

                                                                      ~

            Dawn had not expected snow to be falling this early. She was standing outside of Port Authority on the corner of 42nd and 8th when the storm began. She had just lighted her final cigarette before she would have to get back on the bus for the final stretch of the trip. It was beginning to get dark; Dawn figured by the time they got out of the Lincoln Tunnel it would be nothing but ocean-sized gray brilliance overhead. But then: there it was, waltzing to earth, undeniable as it passed under the stern glow of a street lamp. One snowflake. And over her shoulder, to the west, she noticed heavier clouds building, shaded just a little too dark to mean simply dusk. Dawn curled a smile around her cigarette and thought, A storm coming to Albany. But of course.

            She watched the first snowflakes with a grin and saluted their eagerness to land in Times Square. It being only the first of December, it was possible that this was the first snowfall of the season. Dawn thought they should be honored to be one of the first snowflakes of the winter to land in Manhattan.

            One of the things that made the trip worth it was the stopover in New York City. Even if it would only be an hour, she would take the time to walk around the streets for as long as she could and soak up the atmosphere. She had not been to New York City in a year and a half when she stepped off the bus. She walked down 42nd street, puffs of cigarette smoke rising from her mouth and trailing behind her. While walking, she made sure to take a good look at everyone’s face; she wanted to find out if she would ever see the same face twice. The fact that she had spent days in a row in the same area and never had that happen confused and amazed her.

            For Dawn, it was just one of those things. Just another reason to love New York. The city seemed to have a self-generating energy that was there to be tapped in to. She looked around at the people. She looked at the buildings, the cops, the scene. She would pick up the vibe. She had never lived in New York, but she felt more at home there then any other place she had ever been. It was like a connection of blood. The streets owned her and she owned them, just as it owned every one of these faces and they owned it.  It was a feeling of possession. My city. Mine. Every New Yorker had it, that connection, that pride. Being in New York City was, for Dawn, an honor. And when she looked into the people’s faces, she would see it there too. No matter what intent, good or bad, lay behind it, there was always that swagger in their eye. This, Dawn argued, is what made it the greatest city in the world. It made her ache to be a part of it permanently.

            Dawn, winking at the snowflakes as if they were partners-in-crime, flicked her cigarette butt directly at a taxi and turned to go inside, back to the bus. Out of her peripheral she saw a yellow blur, orange dots suggesting fireworks, and what seemed to be the silhouette of a filter bounce off the back windshield, passing in front of a face from the back seat, mouth open, showing a modest annoyance.

                                                                        ~

            The soft jerk of the bus’s brakes jolted Dawn back to consciousness. The bus was turning off of the New York State Thruway. Shifting over to the window to see what she could see, Dawn found herself watching a pale green sign fly across her field of vision, with the words WELCOME TO ALBANY : AN ALL AMERICA CITY greeting her, sounding like a vague warning. Anxious passengers stood up to get their coats from the overhead compartments but were told to please remain seated until the bus came to a complete stop. They collectively smirked and obeyed, sensing imminent victory anyway.

            Dawn watched as the bus came around a bend and the city came into view. The Albany skyline almost made her cringe in horror. It consisted of five rectangles and a bizarre oval balanced on a hillside. Dawn had heard that that hillside had been one of the most historic neighborhoods in the city until it was decided that the area would be torn down and replaced with “The Plaza”, which was to hold all of the state government offices, to cater to all of the bureaucrats and government officials that worked in the capitol. “The Plaza” turned out to be a big slab of marble with five thirty story buildings on it, a mall underneath, and a grotesque, egg-shaped concert hall called, appropriately enough, The Egg. Dawn did not know which aspect of the Albany skyline bothered her more; the aesthetics of it, or the fact that they deliberately put it where it would be the first thing anyone coming from New York City would see. Dawn couldn’t figure out if they were trying to show everyone that they had a skyline too, or if they were just trying to annoy them. Either way, Dawn didn’t like it one bit.

            The bus turned off of the Thruway eventually, and on to Broadway (another New York City reference that made Dawn uneasy), and then onto Hamilton Street, where an immense, illuminated BUS sign came into view. Almost all of the passengers were standing before the bus stopped. Dawn, who had only her backpack on her lap and had been wearing her jacket, was able to dart out of the bus quickly enough to be one of the first people to touch ground, but was still not the first to have a cigarette lit.

            The bus station was a small, one-story building. There were six other buses there when Dawn arrived, but they were neither coming nor going. They were just waiting. The large fluorescent lights above shone down on her while she watched herself smoke in the glare of the Gate Three window. Snow was placing itself at random on the shoulders and lapels of her black overcoat and adding subtle hints to her brown hair. She exhaled at one point and her cigarette switched hands, allowing her right hand to run through her hair, melting snowflakes and untangling knots. As she watched herself in the window, she noticed another woman, beautiful and petite, staring at not Dawn’s reflection, but, as it seemed, at her cheek. Dawn moved her eyes, slow like silk, towards the woman. She looked to be college-student age, in typical non-threatening attire; jeans, boots, black suede coat. The woman had big green eyes and fair, pale skin with stale freckles, waiting for June sunshine to come out of hibernation. She was tapping a pack of Marlboro Lights against her left palm and looking at Dawn’s cheek with a passive curiosity. Dawn noticed this, and turned away grinning, waiting.

            “Hi.”

            “Hi,” Dawn replied, turning.

            “Got a light?” The woman was standing three feet in front of her, an unlit cigarette in her hand, dangling in front of her face on top of a bent elbow. Dawn noticed up close that the lights made her hair a brown, leathery color. It was thrown behind her head awkwardly; it was uncombed but it appeared to be so on purpose, as if trying to convey a feel, an energy. To Dawn, it worked. She tilted her head to the side and reached deep in her pocket, exaggerating, and pulled out a red lighter. She held it out straight in front of her, pushing it between her index and middle finger with her thumb. The woman in the suede jacket smiled, nodded, and lit her cigarette. She held it in her hand for an extra moment before handing it back to Dawn. One of her top teeth appeared from under her lip for a moment, shining all white, reflecting cool fluorescent into the late autumn air. Dawn turned her head briefly and massaged the filter of her cigarette with her thumb as she pulled it from her mouth.

            “Live here or visiting?”

            “Visiting, thank God,” Dawn replied.

            “Don’t like it here?”

            Dawn squinted her right eye and exhaled blue smoke into the space between them. It hung there for a second, then got caught up in a breeze and dissipated before it had a chance to make itself felt. The space between Dawn and the woman was once again clear.

            “No,” Dawn said. “I don’t.”

            “Don’t feel bad,” said the woman in the suede jacket, ashing her cigarette prematurely. “I don’t either.”

            “Live here or just visiting?”

            “Live here.”

            “Too bad,” Dawn said.

            “It’s not so bad, really,” the woman said. She rubbed one of her knuckles under her nose and sniffed. “My name’s Karen.”

            “Dawn.”

            “Are you taking a cab?”

            Dawn sighed and raised her eyebrows slightly. Another opportunity ruined by a typical line. “No, thanks,” she said, her voice stale. “I’ll be walking, actually.”

            The woman shot her a smile. “Hey, neither am I.”

            Dawn blinked.

            “C’mon.”

            The woman stepped towards the far side of the building, and gestured for Dawn to follow her. Dawn did, thinking that that line turned out to be pretty good after all.

                                                            ~

            Looking at it from the entrance, the bus terminal was surrounded by a parking lot in front and to the right; the back was the area where the buses parked, loaded, and unloaded. It was bordered on the left by Liberty Street, a tiny access road that ran parallel to Broadway, the first main street off of the highway. Dawn and Karen emerged from the back of the building and turned the corner onto Liberty Street, trailing behind the two long shadows cast in front of them by the lights in the parking area. Two small lines of smoke floated upwards from their figures effortlessly, highlighting the separation of the two bodies, which appeared to be connected in shadow. They made no sound until they cleared the front doors of the station, unaffected by the non-threatening leers of three cabbies, probably locals, all bringing their coffee cups down to their waists as the two women passed. Dawn turned an eye to the side subtly, then rolled them softly across her face, trying to see Karen’s eyes. Karen’s glance was fixed on something in the distance.

            “If you want,” she said, “there’s this bar just up right here, if you want to get a drink, a beer, or something.”

            “Sure,” Dawn said, seeing the soft buzz of a yellow triangle in a window a block up. “Anything after that bus trip.”

            “Long one?”

            “All the way from Harrisburg.”

            “Jesus! I’m only coming from New York, and I can’t stand it. Do you live there?”

            “No, actually I live in Poughkipsee. I go to school in Pennsylvania. Gettysburg University. My friend drove me to Harrisburg, and I got the bus there.”

            Karen scratched at her cheek lightly. “I had to take the LIRR all the way to Penn Station and get the bus from Port Authority. I know it can’t compare, but it’s pretty hellish in itself.”

            “Well, if the Island hasn’t changed, I can relate.”

            “It hasn’t. When did you visit the Island? And where?”

            “Three years ago,” Dawn said, turning to Karen and smiling. “Huntington Station. Old boyfriend.”

            “Oohhhhh...” said Karen.

            “Yeah,” said Dawn. “Pretty funny.”

            “I’m from Plainview.”

            “Go figure.”
                                                                       

            Dawn felt the suede brush against her, even through the heavy wool of her coat, as Karen slipped past her and a door-holding local college boy in a white SUNY Albany hat, wearing a beaded necklace and the smell of Vodka. He alternated feet clumsily, and either welcomed them or insulted them, depending on the interpretation of his feeble attempt to articulate his thoughts. He swung an arm heavily behind them as they entered, resisting the urge to touch the suede, that suede...

            The name of the place was Last Call. It was the ground level of a three story, red brick building on the corner of Liberty Street and Division Street. While they were waiting for a trio of drunk college girls to clear the door, Karen noticed Dawn looking up at the street signs. “Good shit, hm?” she asked.

            “That’s odd,” Dawn said. “I’ve visited here three times, always taken this same route to my sister’s place, but have never noticed that before. The street names.” They were two long green sheets of metal with white lettering, Liberty on top, Division on the bottom. They struck out towards their respective streets, bending downwards slightly,  brushed with snow.

            “There’s a first time for everything,” Karen said, as Dawn walked in front of her, towards the now-cleared doorway.

            “There certainly is,” Dawn replied, nodding condescendingly to the bobbing white-hat that was holding the door for her. Then, Karen came up on her shoulder, and past, and the brush of suede, the brush...

            Dawn felt her cheekbones rise.

                                                            ~

            The wood that lined the walls of the bar was a shiny, crisp orange. The moody incandescents embedded in the ceiling made the wood appear to be recently finished, or polished, but Dawn realized upon close inspection that the wood was rather splintered and dirty. She and Karen were standing against the wall opposite the bar. Dawn, who was picking at a splinter in the wall, stopped abruptly and raised her eyes to Karen’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar, right into waiting, expectant eyes. Her outline covered up part of a Budweiser poster on the wall behind her. She was holding her coat in front of her, hand over hand, draped over her right wrist. She held her drink, a Rum and Coke, by squeezing her fingertips at the top of the glass, playfully twirling it around.

            After holding Dawn’s glance for a moment, Karen said, “So have you ever been here before?”

            “No,” Dawn replied. “I’ve seen the place, but haven’t gone in. Until now, that is.”

            Dawn looked around. They were about three feet to the right of the pool table, which nobody was playing on. A jukebox, currently showcasing Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe”, sat by the unattended bar. There was tracklighting across the ceiling overhead, but it was off. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and matches. Besides Dawn and Karen, there were ten people in the bar: Two men in their forties sitting at the far end of the bar. A group of four local college kids, two girls and two guys, probably all underage. In the back corner, two women in their twenties were talking with a bearded man in a suit who was facing the corner but kept looking over his shoulder. The last one Dawn took notice off was a really desperate looking man in a leather jacket sitting at the bar, with three empty shot glasses in front of him. Every now and then, Dawn noticed, he would lower his head slowly to the bar, then jerk it back up again, rubbing his hand at his left temple. Other than that guy, however, Dawn noticed that everyone seemed to be having a good time. The chatter in the place was pretty lively, and drunk-belly-laughs were occasionally heard weaving in and out of high pitched, quickly stifled shrieks from the group of college kids. Everyone was drinking. A bedsheet of cigarette smoke hung three inches under the ceiling, sometimes swimming up into the crevices where the incandescents were.

            “Do you come here a lot?” asked Dawn.

            Karen raised her glass to her lips and took a sip so small that Dawn could not tell if she had actually ingested any liquid. She then pursed her lips as if suppressing a gag and nodded, her eyes wide open. “Yeah, from time to time. I live just up the hill from here, so it’s a convenient place, if not a little stale.”

            “Stale?” Dawn asked, gulping from her bottle of Molson Ice.

            “Yeah,” Karen said. “See those two guys at the end of the bar?” Dawn did. “They’ve been here every time I’ve been here. I think they’re probably here every night. I think they know the other bartender.”

            “What other bartender?”

            “The guy who served us is not the regular bartender. I don’t know where the other guy is. This is the first time I’ve seen that guy tending bar.”

            “They don’t have more than one bartender here?”        

            “Well,” Karen said. “I know there’s the one guy, Denis, who owns the place. He lives upstairs, on the third floor, above the bar. Then there’s a guy who helps out some nights. Weekends, mostly. His name is Chuck, I think. Sweet old black guy. Must be eighty years old. Heart of gold.”

            Dawn shifted her weight slightly, trying to avoid Karen taking notice of it.

            Karen rubbed her right index finger under her lower lip for a moment and smiled, still keeping her eyes locked on Dawn’s reflection. Dawn watched the reflection of Karen’s lips move. “Hey Joe” faded out on the jukebox, bringing the noise level of the patrons down with it, pausing to see what song would come next.       

            “You know,” Karen said, “if this is strange for you...”

            Dawn turned her head from Karen’s reflection to her face, waited a moment for her eyes, and when locked in, said, “It’s not. Why would you think that?”

            “I don’t know,” said Karen.

            “Is it strange for you?”

            “No.”

            “We’re both here, right?”

            “Right.”

            “Well then,” Dawn said, smiling and nodding her head towards the bar, “there goes the bartender. Why don’t you buy me another drink?” Dawn lifted her glass, which was about three-quarters finished, to eye level, pondered something for a moment, closed her eyes and swallowed the remaining liquid in one gulp.

            Karen turned her head and saw a slim man with thinning, slick, rust colored hair, maybe twenty-eight, close one of the doors off to the side of the bar behind him and walk behind the bar, a case of whiskey on one of his shoulders. He put the box down and acknowledged the eager stares of two college guys, who, on cue, walked up to the bar with twenty dollar bills in their hands.

            “You want another Molson?”   

            “How about a Long Island Iced Tea?” asked Dawn.

            “Be right back.”

                                                            ~

            Nick Kohl served two college guys a round of Bud bottles, all the time watching their faces, thinking, They’re looking at my back in the mirror. He couldn’t decide if he was beginning to hate the bar or not. But he kept reminding himself that it was only permanent by choice, that he did not have to re-sign, or even finish, the lease.  He kept wondering if he should feel bad, depressed, or even slightly glum. He resented himself when he got indignant. He had a whole city to reclaim if he wanted to. You can always call yourself a victim, Nick thought. But he didn’t feel that doing so took the place of personal responsibility, his own. He was in Albany by choice. He was standing in this bar by choice. He was now fear free. By choice.

            I ran away from New York City, he thought. By choice.

            It was good, that he planned to stay away from the city for awhile. It would get his mind straight.

            “Nick, double bourbon.”

            “Comin’ right up.”

            He walked over to Greg, one of the regulars, and fixed his drink. Greg Matterson was sixty-three years old and worked as a janitor at the Pepsi Arena. He would walk over to the bar, which was only four or so blocks away, every day after he got off work at 6 and stay until closing time. If there was a concert or hockey game that he had to work he would only be in for a few hours, but he always stayed until closing time and always paid for his last drink of the night in cash (he was the only customer Nick had given a tab to). He was short, stocky, and in the first stages of becoming an old man. His hair had thinned and loosened, his wrinkles had started to deepen,  and his face had recently started to sag a little more while he was frowning, or in a foul mood. He had been working as a janitor for ten years and had been coming to this bar almost every day of those ten years. He always wore this sharp black overcoat and this hat, this 1920’s gangster derby, silver and black, and they fit around his body with a familiarity that was almost surreal.

            On the rare occasions that Nick would see him without the derby and the coat, in the bathroom, for instance, it would never fully register with Nick that anything in his appearance had changed. They were simply an extension of his personality when he had them on.                                                          “Nick, how’s it going?”

            Nick leaned back against the shelf the register was on and folded his arms across his chest. His head faced forward, staring into the bar. “It’s going well, Greg. How about you?”

            “Not so bad. Had another appointment with the chiropractor today.”

            “Ah.”

            “He says my back shouldn’t be a problem for much longer.”

            “Say Greg,” Nick said, motioning to Greg across the bar, “Are you going to have any more for your tab tonight?”

            “Hey, Nick, c’mon...” Greg slurred. “I gave you sixty last night.”

            “Right. That was only sixty, though. You still owe me another thirty plus fifteen for tonight.”

            “Aw, Nick...”

            “So far.”

            “Nick, look,” Greg said, spreading his hands, palms down, on the table, his fingers touching the bottom of his glass. He stretched back and pulled his hat off, running his fingers through his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair.  “Denis would let me slide for a week or two. But he knew I always paid in the end. And I do.”

            “Greg, I’m sure Denis loved you. But he’s not around anymore. So just-- just try and keep up on the tab.”

            “Nick, I’m good for it!” Greg said excitedly.

            Nick rolled his eyes and turned to go, noticing the eager eyes of a young woman at the far end of the bar. She was carefully holding a folded ten dollar bill between her fingers, and when she noticed Nick had seen her, flashed him the ‘hurry, I’m going to get laid’ look. Nick noticed she had the same, boring sex in her eyes as the rest of them. It’s not that all they want is sex, he thought. They’re simply one-dimensional. Their ravenous craving for easy sex was just a manifestation of that. He knew it. He saw it in all their faces, every night, and it grew more obvious every time he served them more liquor. He would watch it evolve, watch it develop throughout the night. Some of them were really good at hiding it, but it all came out with enough liquor. But it’s not just them, Nick thought. It was something else. The city. 

            “Hey Nick,” said Greg.

            Nick turned to Greg.

            “How’s the arm?” he asked. A slight chuckle emerged from the gentleman to Greg’s right.         Nick smiled widely. “As good as ever, Greg. As good as ever.”

                                                                ~

            Rum and Coke. I’ll get Rum and Coke.

            She wants a Long Island Iced Tea. D--  Dawn.

            Dawn.

            Karen made curious eye contact with one of the two guys sitting at the end of the bar, the one who had laughed when the other guy asked the bartender about his arm. His eyes suggested that the inside joke just pulled was so funny and bitter that he wished she had understood it. Karen shifted her glance steadily, back to the smirking bartender, who was heading towards her.

            Rum and Coke. Long Island Iced Tea.

            “What can I get you?” he asked.

            “Rum and Coke and a Long Island Iced Tea.”

            “Eight-fifty.”     

            Karen put the ten dollar bill down on the counter and slid it a little towards the bartender. “Keep it,” she said.

            “Thanks.”

            Karen bit her lip and looked in the mirror to see her eye twitching a little. She was surprised. She had not had much to drink, but her hands were cold and clammy. She put one against her cheek and looked for Dawn’s reflection. Dawn was watching the bartender mix the Long Island Iced Tea. Karen, scratching a little harder than usual at behind her ear, looked at her hand running through her hair and blushed with a ferocity that suggested mild paranoia. She looked at herself again. She was nervous for no good reason.

            The bartender stepped in front of her and pushed two glasses across the bar, both leaving a little spilt liquid in condensation trails behind them.

            “Thanks,” said the bartender.

            “You’re not the usual guy here.”

            “I am now.”

            “What about the other guy?”

            “Tall, brown hair, glasses, big chin?”

            “Yeah, didn’t he own the place?”

            “He did. Not anymore, though. Now I do.”

            Karen grabbed one drink in each hand. “Where is he now?”

            Nick leaned back and folded his arms. He looked down at Karen with a gentle smile. “He’s dead.”

            Karen pushed her lower lip out in empathy. She had the feeling that the bartender felt sorry for her.

                                                            ~

            Karen walked back to Dawn, who was leaning on the pool table. She raised her right hand, with the Long Island Iced Tea in it, and extended it towards Dawn.

            Dawn took the glass, raised it slowly, clinked it against Karen’s drink, and took a large sip. She lowered her glass, resting it against her hip. Karen imagined the little tiny wet spot that would be on Dawn’s jeans. She watched the muscles on Dawn’s face smile, she watched her eyes moving, every inch, because she somehow knew that it was all important, even though she could never get there, even though the same exact thoughts, the same exact feelings were involved, it could never be shared. It could only be staring into eyes, no matter how much emotion was involved...         

                                                            ~

            Nick stood back and watched everyone. He was witnessing it, the transformation. It was going on right in front of him. The uniformity of thought began to emerge. Because they had had enough. They would have more, but they had reached the point, say, three or four drinks, and now not only was everyone showing their one dimension, they were flaunting it. Because they knew that everyone was there with them, that they were all comfortable with it now. Outside the bar, outside the liquor haze, they knew they couldn’t act that way. But inside the bar, not only was it expected, it was welcomed, encouraged. Everyone loved that fact that they could be stupid together.

            It’s no fun to drink alone, he thought.

                                                            ~

            Dawn, leaning against the pool table sipping at her glass, had been watching the bartender fix their drinks. Once, after pouring one of the clear liquors into the glass, he pushed into his elbow and forcibly folded his arm. It looked like it had stiffened up a bit. Dawn realized that that is what the guy at the end of the bar was asking about. Dawn wondered what was so funny about it.

            Karen had shifted her arm three times in a three minute span but her hand had still not gotten any closer to Dawn’s. She spoke to Dawn of the bus ride and told her a few old stories about New York City. Nothing too funny, but light enough to keep the conversation flowing. Karen was hoping Dawn would laugh really hard at something, so she would be able to touch her shoulder and laugh along. But most of the time, she was leaning against the pool table as well, alternating feet as her hip shifted towards Dawn’s personal space. Her left hand was resting on her right shoulder, with her chin pointing towards it, suggestive.

            Dawn, extremely aware of Karen’s movements, held herself mentally still, just letting out enough at the right moments to keep everything moving smoothly. To work on someone like this, in this situation, was something Dawn had made something of an art form. Once in a while she would nibble on her thumb a little and make eye contact, only to turn away a second later and leave Karen wondering what that particular smile meant. She would sink into Karen’s eyes and know exactly which levers to push and when. The right moment to blush. The right moment to give a little.       

            It wasn’t manipulation, she figured. It was a game. She liked the fact that she was always one step ahead of her. Always dictating the mood, the type and brightness of the smiles, the quickness and agility of certain winks. She played this game to see if there would be anyone who could keep up with her head. It wasn’t often that she found someone who played the way she wanted to, but even when she did, she never really cared anyway. Just like a game, Dawn thought, Someone wins, someone loses, and then we wake up and have the chance to do it again. But just like the game, it never really means anything anyway, so what’s the big deal?

            She didn’t want to think that. She briefly turned her head away from the conversation and looked at the bartender. His eyes were pointed towards the far corner of the bar, watching the bearded man in the corner. His face was drawn and sober, and had a peculiar aura of peacefulness to it. He turned his body towards her and caught her eye for a second, glared at her as if he had just ripped her clothes off, and turned from her just as quickly. Her heart leaped for a second, and she almost coughed on the mouthful of Long Island Iced Tea she had been attempting to swallow. She gathered herself rather quickly, and simply ended up with a slight frown, and, she realized as Karen touched her arm and gave it a light squeeze, a heavy silence.

            “Hey, is everything okay?”

            Dawn looked up at Karen and put her hand at her elbow, catching her breath slightly at the contact with suede.

            “Everything is just fine, Karen.”

            “You want to get out of here?” Karen said involuntarily, the words forced out of her by the combination of Dawn’s squeezing her elbow and holding a long blink while saying her name. Dawn rose up first, straightening herself out and rubbing her hands at her behind, wiping off dirt that was not there. Her eyes pulled Karen along as she crossed in front of her, leading. Once she saw Karen following behind her, she shot a dirty glance over at the bartender, who was holding a rag at his elbow, and staring back at her. He simply looked bored, and resumed talking to the two men at the end of the bar. Nobody held the door for them on the way out.

                                                            ~

            Greg Matterson lifted one eyebrow to heaven and smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on that wall tonight, hm?”

            Nick felt his left eye twitch slightly. “Same old bullshit,” he said. He hoped he hadn’t sounded as sad as he thought he had.

            Greg pushed his cheek in with the right side of his mouth, giving Nick a bemused look. “I still think you would. You’re the fly on the wall type.”

            “At least I stay out of people’s way.”

            Greg lifted his glass and dropped it to the bar with a loud thud. “That’s my boy!” he said, raising his voice so that three people behind him turned. “That you do!”

            Nick turned his head sarcastically at Greg’s forced laughter and walked away do find something to do at the other end of the bar.

                                                            ~

            Later that night, at last call, Greg tipped his hat and ordered a Johnny Walker on the rocks and laid down a five dollar bill. Four for the drink, one for Nick. When Nick came over and placed the drink in front of him, he became typically moody and sentimental, watching Nick wistfully while stirring his drink by rotating his wrist at a moderate speed. When Nick put the five in his pocket and turned to leave, Greg called him back.

            “What is it?” Nick asked, going through the motions of wiping the counter in front of Greg.

            “Before, when those two ladies were leaving, I noticed you squeezing your arm. Is everything okay?”

            “It does feel pretty stiff today, actually.”

            “Oh?”

            “I did a lot of writing last night.”

            “You don’t say.” Greg sipped his scotch through a friendly smile.

            Nick raised one of his eyebrows and nodded his head in Greg’s direction.

            “Fly on the wall, indeed,” Greg said, with a tone of voice that suggested a toast.

     Nick said nothing and picked up a couple of empty glasses on the bar. Greg watched him.